Faced with the disturbing fact that Muammar Gadhafi’s wife and three children, including some grandchildren, were able to flee over the Libyan border to Algeria in spite of a U.N. travel ban, the U.S. State Department nevertheless is taking a low-key approach.

“There are concerns that this isn’t in keeping with the travel ban restrictions,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters Tuesday but, defending the administration’s response, she said the U.S. is reviewing Algeria’s explanation for why it let the family into the country.

Gadhafi’s two sons who fled, Hannibal and Mohammed, along with his daughter, Aisha, are specifically named in the U.N. travel ban for “closeness of association with regime.”

The State Department is slamming an amateur video put on YouTube showing the American ambassador being harassed by a Syrian supporter of President Bashar al-Assad, calling it a "feeble attempt to divert the world's attention from what's really happening to the Syrian people."

The video, the authenticity of which CNN cannot verify, is part of a report on U.S. Ambassador Robert Ford carried by Al Donya TV. It claims that Ford and other Westerners were trying to infiltrate a crowd of pro-Assad supporters in Damascus. It also says that Ford was in Syria to try to subvert the Assad regime.

A man described as an eyewitness tells the reporter he chased Ford down and covered him in an Assad poster because he knew Ford was trying "to play with this country."

The arrival in Algeria of Moammar Gadhafi's wife and three of his children seems likely to become yet another thorny issue in an already prickly relationship between Libya's rebel leadership and the Algerian government.

The two sides have been at odds since officials of the National Transitional Council accused Algeria of supporting Gadhafi – a claim denied by the Algerians, who say they are neutral in the Libyan conflict. But Algeria is the only one of Libya's North African neighbors yet to recognize the NTC as Libya's legitimate authority and last week protested to the United Nations over damage done to the Algerian embassy in Tripoli.

Some rebel officials have already complained about Gadhafi family members being allowed to cross the border, which Algeria has described as a humanitarian gesture.

In a sharply worded statement reported by Reuters Tuesday, NTC spokesman Mahmoud Shamman said Libya's new rulers had "promised to provide a just trial to all those criminals and therefore we consider this an act of aggression."

"We are warning anybody not to shelter Gadhafi and his sons," Shammam said. "We are going after them in any place to find them and arrest them," he said. FULL POST

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CNN's Security Clearance examines national and global security, terrorism and intelligence, as well as the economic, military, political and diplomatic effects of it around the globe, with contributions from CNN's national security team in Washington and CNN journalists around the world.